Oakland Nature Preserve

We stayed later than we should have.

But my husband was heads down in his phone, Merlin app open, Pokémon T-shirt sprayed with copious amounts of bug spray, swearing he was chasing down the call of a rare bird. It reminded me why I usually stayed in bed on the early mornings when he went birding, but that evening, the sunset was particularly bright, so I agreed to go with him. And he promised we would get ice cream after.

Oakland Nature Preserve closed at sunset, and between the color of the sky and Apple Weather, I estimated we had a solid ten minutes. We walked along the decking, something I hadn’t expected on a nature trail. My biggest fear was being bitten by a snake. Not snakes themselves—I actually found them quite interesting. Just their bites. The decking made the walk much more enjoyable for me, keeping nature at a careful distance where I could observe it through my husband’s binoculars.

“It flew that way,” I said, pointing to my right toward a thick copse of vegetation.

My husband looked between his phone and the trees. “And you are absolutely one hundred percent sure it had a red mohawk and not just a red patch on its head?”

When he looked back at his phone, I glared at him. “Yes,” I said dryly. “I am absolutely one hundred percent certain.” 

It truly is amazing how the things we love the most can also get under our skin the easiest, I thought. Like a cute little bug that exists just to burrow beneath the dermal layer.

I continued on the trail, content to leave him studying his phone and the bird he still doubted had a mohawk. Dense Floridian shrubs, bushes, and trees lined the walk, reaching toward the sky, which had turned a rusted shade of orange. Perched atop a faraway tree peeking above the swamp, a black vulture looked down on the preserve. It seemed darker and larger than the ones I usually saw picking apart roadkill, so I lifted the binoculars to my eyes for a better look.

As I twisted the lens, the bird came into focus, its head tilting, its eyes narrowing, almost as if it had noticed me looking back at it. I studied it for a moment longer. Then the birdsong from before was replaced with scratching. The sound lifted the hair on my neck.

I slowly dropped the binoculars and froze. Around me, hundreds of cicadas stared back. From the trees. From the leaves. From the railing. From the trail. Even from places I was sure I couldn’t see them. When I dragged my gaze down to my feet, I couldn’t find a place to step without crushing one beneath my heel.

“Uh…” I called, loudly enough for my husband to hear me around the bend. “I think I’m ready to leave now.”

A second passed.

“Why?”

The question apparently startled one of the cicadas, and it jumped onto my leg.

So I did what any rational adult woman would do: I screamed bloody murder.

The fiberglass boards shook as my husband came pounding down the walk. I thrashed, kicking out my leg and flinging my arms, clearing as much space as I could. The thought of the sickening crunch of a five-inch cricket-looking thing beneath my sneaker was the last thing on my mind.

“What the hell happened?” my husband asked, breathless and exasperated.

“It jumped on me.”

I waved my hands wildly, pointing out the cicadas.

But when my husband blinked and arched his brows, giving me the same look he gave me when I explained why I thought a new Taylor’s Version was around the corner, they were gone. The only trace left of them was their slow whine, rising like screams in the evening.

“I swear there were, like, a million of them everywhere and—”

“Let’s go get ice cream,” he said, finally sliding his phone into his pocket. “The preserve is closing anyway.”

I wanted to explain that I wasn't crazy, but I couldn’t argue with his proposed action, so I kept my mouth shut. He already knew I was crazy, anyway.

We started back, retracing our steps along the trail. Our footsteps fell in time, so when off-rhythm stomps vibrated through the boards beneath my feet, my stomach churned. I kept glancing over my shoulder, expecting to see something. Nothing was there.

After about five minutes, we both slowed.

“Did we really go that far?” my husband asked, scratching his head.

“We were chasing the bird with the mohawk.” I shrugged. “Apparently we did.”

We kept going, passing a notably large and vibrant spider on a web stretched across a branch above the trail. Its body shone like an oil slick, its legs long and thin as bony fingers. My skin crawled just looking at it. I hurried my pace to keep up with my husband, choosing to count my footsteps instead of the creepy crawlies that came out at night in the Florida swampland.

But more time passed, and we still hadn’t found the gazebo at the start of the trail.

My heart climbed toward my throat. I looked up, expecting to find the swamp thinning around us, the ecotone shifting to drier land and parking lots. Instead, my eyes caught on the same large spider.

“Are we…” I said slowly, “going in a circle?”

My husband wrinkled his nose and pulled out his phone. “We’re literally on top of the parking lot.”

He showed me the map. The blue dot was us; the pin was our car. And we were, indeed, right on top of it.

I scanned the deepening sky and the shadows creeping from the trees.

“Then where is the exit?”

He frowned. “It must be close.”

“It’s sundown. The preserve is closed now.”

“I know.”

“Which means we need to leave.”

“What do you think we’re trying to do?”

He started walking again, holding his phone in front of him as if that alone could get us off a trail that had only been one straight line.

I jogged lightly after him, the extra footsteps closing in behind us. The thud of my heart was enough to keep my legs moving. I risked another glance behind me, expecting to see nothing. Instead, a figure cloaked in shadow moved at the corner of my eye.

A scream leapt from me as I slammed into my husband’s back. I waited for him to ask what the heck was wrong with me. Why I was so jumpy. Why I was making this worse.

Instead, he pointed. Beside the trail sat a den made of branches and vines. A hole big enough for a person to crawl through. A mound large enough to hide several more.

The boards trembled beneath my feet.

He didn’t take his eyes off the den. “What do you think lives there?”

I gestured to the nearby sign with a cartoon otter on it. “I want to say otter,” I replied, trying to keep my voice light. “But honestly, it’s exactly what I imagined a swamp witch lives in.” I glanced back at the hole. “Or Bigfoot.”

My husband laughed. I knew him well enough to know it was fake.

We kept walking, side by side, the shadows still moving in the corners of my vision and the boards still vibrating beneath my feet. I told myself I was imagining it.

Until my husband looked over his shoulder. “Do you hear that?” His blue eyes were dark in the last edges of light, but the fear in them was unmistakable. I could only imagine what mine looked like.

A hiss rose from a bush near the trail, low and wet, like a gator defending a nest. Or something else, upset that we were there. I swallowed, my throat closing. Suddenly, a snake bite seemed like the least of my worries. At least snakes kept off the trail.

“Yes,” I whispered.

Despite the hot, humid air, my breath came out in a puff.

The footsteps broke into a run behind us, drawing closer, the boards shaking like piano keys beneath our feet. And when a piercing, ear-splitting roar sounded close by, it didn’t take the bonds of marriage for us to know what the other was thinking.

We ran.

Hand in hand, the binoculars bounced against my chest, leaving bruises I would worry about in the morning. My husband dragged me forward, running faster than I had ever seen him run, willing me forward as the roar and pounding grew closer. The preserve rushed past in shades of black, whatever creatures hid in the trees no longer my concern.

We just needed to get out.

The roar was nearly on top of us when I gave a desperate shriek, feeling something brush near my ear. A hand. Or a claw. Or a paw.

Or something else.

My husband yanked me closer, letting out his own scream when he looked over his shoulder. I felt the heat of whatever was behind us on my back. The brush of fur. The scrape of nails. The papery drag of something that felt too much like skin.

And just when I felt its hand close around my throat, my husband stopped.

I hadn’t realized I had closed my eyes. But when I opened them, we stood beneath the gazebo, where one small, flickering light lit the space.

I spun, looking behind me.

Only the dim green of the swamp answered. That, and the low coo of an evening dove.

My husband’s chest rose and fell quickly, and his throat bobbed as he swallowed. When we passed the donation box, he slid what little cash he had from his pocket into the slot, and we wordlessly returned to our car.

We pulled the gates of Oakland Nature Preserve closed behind us when we left. Neither of us wanted ice cream anymore.

And my husband never found the bird with the red mohawk.